


love is a wild thing

by leatherandlace



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, and also everyone is alive, nat is absolutely part of the stark family, this is sad at first but it gets better i promise, this is the reunion we deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 23:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20518391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leatherandlace/pseuds/leatherandlace
Summary: maria has been mourning alongside the stark family for a month when nat suddenly falls out of the sky, mjölnir in hand.or:the reunion between nat, maria, and the stark family that we deserved.





	love is a wild thing

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "love is a wild thing" by kacey musgraves, if you want the real experience of this fic, listen to that on a repeat i promise you will not regret it. this fic goes alongside my other fic, "there's always room here for the lonely," but it can be read as a standalone.
> 
> some background: tony is ALIVE in this fic, as he should be, and nat is a member of the stark family since im2 days. when tony said "do we know if she had any family?" in endgame, he was being bitter and sarcastic. they were best friends, you cannot change my mind.
> 
> also i know the beginning is really sad, but just stick to the end. it gets better, i promise. hopefully the same can be said for black widow (2020).
> 
> come talk to me about this fic!!! my stan twitter is: @pinkjacquelyn

_ i. _

  
  


Maria had her hands fixed firmly on the steering will, jaw set and eyes never straying from the road. She barely moved, could barely breathe, could barely keep her heart from sputtering out as she drove way too fast to Tony’s house. If a cop pulled her over, she doubted she’d stop. What were they going to do? 

She refused to let her mind wander anywhere outside of this strip of highway until she got to Tony’s and heard the story from him. Fury would’ve come with her, but after Tony’s call, the sadness and loss in his voice, Fury had no chance of catching up with her as she drove away.

The gas light came on, ripping her out of her thoughts. Her car was making weird noises. Probably from being idle for five years. 

She pulled off the nearest exit and to a gas station, shaking as she took the key out of the ignition. Maria ran a hand through her hair, the turtleneck and jacket a little too warm for the weather around her. The sun itself seemed out of place, jarring, though she figured it was probably fitting for all of the reunions and happiness the world was feeling.

While she was filling her tank she kept her mind intentionally blank, but a cry rang out and her head snapped up. Maria watched with a sinking stomach and ragged breaths clawing up her throat as a woman ran into the gas station and embraced the man behind the counter. She could hear sobs of joy, exclamations of love. Her ears rang with someone else’s voice as she watched the couple cry into each other’s arms. Her heart pounded uncomfortably in her chest, and Tony’s sigh through the phone echoed in her ears. 

She returned the nozzle back to its place before her tank finished filling up.

The car door slammed behind her and her head was swirling, throbbing in beat with her racing pulse. She leaned her head against the wheel, taking shuddering breaths, trying in vain to make herself calm down. She couldn’t let herself feel any of it until she knew for sure, until she looked Tony in the eye and heard him say that Natasha really was gone. 

Her phone buzzed, and it wasn’t until then that Maria realized she had about a million notifications on every app on her phone. When she saw the hundreds of missed calls, her heart nearly stopped beating for a moment. With a shaky finger she tapped on the application and saw hundreds of voicemails--some from her sister, some from Tony, some from Rhodey. But she scrolled with suppressed tears past dozens of voicemails from Natasha. 

Maria screwed her eyes shut, gripping the wheel and putting her car in drive as she scrolled to the bottom and clicked on the first of Natasha’s voicemails.

_ (Natasha’s entire body was frozen in fear as she dialed the phone number she knew by heart, her heartbeat worryingly slow as Maria’s phone rang. _

_ And rang. _

_ And rang. _

“Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.” _ Nat shook her head no, no, no. No, this couldn’t be happening. Please pick up. She dialed again and again, refusing to believe that Maria wasn’t just out dealing with the crisis, too busy to check her phone. She was just busy, not dead, no, just busy, alive and heart beating and not a pile of ash somewhere. _

Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.  _ “Maria, I really need you to pick up. I know you’re busy with everything that’s happening, but I...I need to know you’re okay. Please call back as soon as you can.”) _

Nat’s voice was thick with tears, and Maria was finding it harder and harder to remain stoic with each passing voicemail. She kept listening, though, holding onto the wheel with white knuckles as Nat realized Maria was gone, when Nat fought with herself to keep going.

_ ( _ Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.  _ “It’s been a month. I...I don’t know what to do. The stones are gone. Everyone’s gone. I can’t do this. _ ”

Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.  _ “The compound is so lonely. It feels like I’m the only one who wants to keep S.H.I.E.L.D. alive. Who knew one day I’d have your job right? I could never do it like you did. I...I miss you.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. “ _ Tony and Pepper moved to this cabin near a lake. I think I’m gonna stay there for awhile. The compound is just me and Steve whenever he decides to stop by, and I don’t feel okay by myself there.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.  _ “Why were you in the 50%? I can’t live like this without you, it’s too much. I can’t do this. I can’t  _ do  _ this, Maria. Please. Please, come back.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.  _ “Pepper’s pregnant! They asked me to be the godmother, can you believe it? I wish you could see Pepper like this, her little baby bump. That’s her calling right now. I miss you so much.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.  _ “They named her Morgan. She’s so beautiful, Maria. Tony and Pep look so happy. They have me around the house pretty constantly to help. Tony and I are in charge of meals, or rather he cooks and I help while Pepper bosses us around. Morgan has the prettiest eyes, I love her so much, Maria.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. _ “I brought Morgan to her first ballet lesson today. She said she wanted to be like ‘Auntie Nat,’ and I bought her the prettiest leotard and ballet slippers, just like mine.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. _ “Sometimes I wonder where we’d be if you were alive right now. It’s been four years. Would we be married? Would we still be together? I know I don’t call as much anymore, it's still so hard. I miss you everyday.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can.  _ “I love you. I never got the chance to say it, I was too scared, and I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you when you were alive. I’m sorry if you died thinking I didn’t love you. But I love you, so, so much.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. _ “We found a way, Maria. To bring everyone back. It’s risky, but Tony found a way. He looks tired. I probably do too. I haven’t felt this hopeful in years, I feel like I could see you again soon. I miss you so much. Fuck, I can’t stop crying. I hope this works.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. _ “I’m going to space. Me. Going to space. We leave tomorrow.” _

  
  


Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. _ “I’m getting ready to leave now. Hopefully the next voicemail I send you is because you’re driving to come see me. I love you.”) _

  
  


The last voicemail was dated two days ago. 

  
  


Maria could feel her resolve crumbling with each minute closer to Tony’s house, and when she finally pulled into the unfamiliar driveway, the last of her composure crumbled. She watched Tony come out of the house, eyes rimmed red, Pepper behind him and the little girl Maria had just learned so much about peeking from between her legs. 

  
  


She couldn’t process everything that was happening, but she welcomed Tony’s arms around her, the first real touch she’d felt since coming back. Maria thought she would start crying as soon as she saw him, but something inside of her cracked, and she felt lifeless and concave in Tony’s embrace. Pepper reached around him and hugged her in turn, missing her just as much as she was comforting her. 

  
  


Maria wipes her eyes, dry but somehow still watering, and looks down at Morgan, “You must be Morgan?” Her voice doesn’t quite reach her ears, muted and underwater. Morgan nods quietly, a strange sort of recognition in her eyes. “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Maria.”

  
  


“Auntie Nat’s Maria?” Her name knocks the wind out of Maria, and she nods as her vision feels like it’s blurring.

  
  


Tony invites her to stay for as long as she needs, offers up Nat’s room when he sees Maria look longingly at the doorway. His voice was quiet, and he is uncharacteristically contemplative, a faraway look in his eyes as he leads Maria down the hallway. She pauses, looking up at the frames lining the walls, and it knocks him out of his stupor. There was a photo of Tony, Pepper, Morgan, and Nat, Morgan balanced on Nat’s lap as she was opening a present on what was seemingly Christmas morning.

  
  


“That’s new,” Maria mumbled to herself, fingers brushing against the glass covering Natasha in the photo. Her blonde had grown out since the last time Maria had seen her, fading into a rosy pink where the blonde met red, long hair cascading down Nat’s back with a braid tucked into the ear. Maria wondered what it would feel like to run her fingers through it, to have been beside her on that morning.

  
  


Tony stands by her, “She got really into braiding as her hair grew. She’d braid Morgan’s hair all the time, gave them little matching ones.” His eyes fall to the ground, and Maria knows she’s not the only one feeling like her world just got tipped off of its axis. 

  
  


_ (“Are you really putting this photo up of me? I look crazy,” Nat joked as Tony hammered the nail into the wall.  _

  
  


_ Morgan ran up to Nat and she scooped her up into her arms, “I think you look pretty.” _

  
  


_ “No, she looks crazy,” Tony joked, finally hanging up the photo. Christmas that year had been one full of soft laughter and smiles, and Nat had gotten Morgan the present she was opening in that photo: A pink leotard and ballet slippers just like hers.) _

Tony had offered another guest room as opposed to Natasha’s, but Maria just desperately wanted another reminder of her, something, anything. When she finally sat down, though, and took in the room, how it still smelled like her,  _ felt  _ like her, it hurt more than she expected. Pictures of her with various members of the Stark family were scattered around the room, and Maria picked them up and inspected each one with a smile on her face. Natasha was right--Pepper did look adorable with her baby bump.

She felt detached from her body as she changed into pajamas, ruffling through the drawers until she eventually found a hoodie and sweatpants that were originally hers. She shrugs them on, tucking her nose into the collar and relishing the smell of Natasha’s laundry detergent.

Maria sits on the edge of the bed, running her hand over the covers and feeling lost in the life Nat had built for herself here. Nat spent years here, years without her, probably recorded many of the voicemails in this room, cried here, laughed here. She felt like Natasha was  _ right there,  _ but so overwhelmingly unreachable. 

Hours pass, and eventually she slips under the covers and stares at the ceiling and wonders how many sleepless nights Nat had over the past five years.  _ Five years _ . Five years Nat was alone, five years Nat had the weight of the world on her shoulders. The door creaks open, and Maria startles before she sees Morgan in the doorway, clutching a plush rabbit. She stares at Maria in the darkness and Maria stares back, unsure for a second, feels like she’s being sized up. “Come in?”

Morgan crawls up onto the bed, sitting with her back on the headboard, her face lit up dimly by the crack in the door. “Auntie Nat missed you.”

Maria doesn’t know what to say, feels so out of her element in so many ways, and the mention of Natasha sends her heart beating faster just as it did before. Maria’s just about to respond, but Morgan hops up and rounds the bed. She reaches into the second drawer in the nightstand, pulling out a creased photo. Maria doesn’t get a good look at it until Morgan crawls over her legs and settles back into the light of the doorway. 

“Auntie Nat kept this picture of you in there.”

_ (“Hey, what’s in here?” Morgan was rummaging around Nat’s room while Nat did her makeup in the vanity, and Natasha doesn’t have enough time to spot Morgan through the mirror and tell her to stop before she’s has already fished out the picture in her nightstand.  _

_ “Who’s this?” Morgan points to Maria, the woman in question standing by the stove, cooking something and shooting a smile over her shoulder as Nat took the picture. _

_ Nat walks over and sits beside Morgan on the bed, hand reaching out to coax the photo from her. Morgan leans her head on Nat’s shoulder, giving Nat time to answer. “This is Maria.” _ _   
_

_ “Who’s that?” Morgan doesn’t miss a beat, and Natasha looks out of the doorway, hoping to find Tony or Pepper there to help her. No such luck. _

_ Natasha plays with the corner of the photo, “Maria was my girlfriend.” Using Maria’s name in the past tense always felt like a betrayal, an admittance of something she couldn’t bear to face. Saying Maria’s name in general hurt, but she forced herself to say it, even if it was to whisper Maria’s name up at the ceiling as a reminder that she actually  _ was  _ real, and not something Nat had dreamed up. “She was someone that disappeared in the Snap.” _

_ Morgan furrowed her eyebrows, “Like Peter?” Tony had made sure to tell his daughter all about Peter, with Nat and Pepper’s help, of course. The subject was touchy, and Nat’s breath hitched remembering both Maria and Peter, the force of the loss hitting her hard. “Yeah,” she whispered, remembering the friendship she had forged with Peter, the phonecalls as he swung around the city, the gifts he had gotten her on many holidays, and the pranks they pulled on Tony. “Like Peter.” _

_ “What was she like?” From there on out, Natasha talked more about Maria, both then and in normal conversation. Tony and Pepper encouraged it, thought it was good for Natasha to talk about it.  _

  
  


_ Nat told Morgan all about Maria--her favorite foods, her cooking skills, how hard she worked, how she kept the Avengers in line. “She was the only one who had a shot at keeping me and your dad in line. Other than your mom, of course.” _

  
  


_ It felt good, talking about Maria. She kept the photo in her nightstand, though, taking it out when it felt like the world was spinning a little too fast.) _

  
  


Morgan gives her the photo, sliding out of bed again and leaving the room but leaving the door open. Maria stares down at the photo, running her fingers over the creased and rough edges. She remembers Nat taking this photo, how she had been cooking them a nice dinner because Nat had had a bad day, remembers Nat putting on her apron and kissing her all soft and sweet, remembers Nat taking out the camera and snapping the photo because Peter had gotten her a camera for her birthday. It was all so much.

  
  


Morgan comes back into the room, holding a tablet and scooting to sit beside Maria again. She opens up the camera app, scrolling through to find a few videos. She clicks one of them, and Nat shows up on the screen, laughing so hard there are almost tears in her eyes. Tony is in the background, hair sticking up straight and looking bewildered. “You woke me up!” Natasha keeps laughing as Tony begins running towards her, and the camera cuts off before any of the damage is done. Morgan giggles to herself while watching, and Maria watches both Morgan and the video, taken aback by all the laughter that seemed to go against everyone’s mood.

  
  


_ (“Can I record you braiding my hair?” Morgan asks on camera, climbing up onto Nat’s vanity and setting the tablet up so it shows both her and Nat in frame. Nat sticks her tongue out over Morgan’s shoulder, softly pleating her hair while mumbling through the bobby pin in her mouth.  _

  
  


_ “I turned four today!” Morgan tells the camera, and Nat nods her head in agreement. _

_ Natasha reaches out of frame and grabs a “Birthday Princess” crown, placing it on her own head as she continues braiding Morgan’s hair. “Auntie Nat surprised me this morning by waking me up with breakfast in bed and a ballet dance! She sang the ‘Birthday Song’ from  _ 12 Dancing Princesses  _ and danced around, it was so fun!”) _

Maria watched dozens of tiny videos, little snippets of Natasha’s life when she lived there, at times making Maria laugh out loud and in other times making the sadness linger under her skin.

She is so lost in her own emotions, she doesn’t notice that Morgan is starting to cry until she is shaking beside her, tears slipping down her cheeks and off her chin. “I miss Auntie Nat.”

Maria looks out the door to see if Tony or Pepper are there to help her, feeling like a deer in headlights. But she wraps her arms around Morgan, the goddaughter of the love of her life, so clearly close to Nat in ways Maria couldn’t begin to understand, and holds her closer. “I miss her, too.” Maria feels hot tears well up in her eyes, lets one of them run down and catch in the crease of her nose. “It’s going to be okay.”

It had to be.

  
  


_ ii. _

  
  


A month passes. 

Maria doesn’t delete the voicemails off of her phone. She doesn’t move things around the apartment. She doesn’t stop dreaming about Natasha. She doesn’t forgive Clint, even if she should. 

(The first time she saw Clint, it wasn’t pretty. Tony was with her, and Clint was apologizing over and over, rationalizing what happened in as many ways as he could.

“It’s what she wanted. I tried to fight her, I really did, but Tash--”

Maria was walking away from him, but she turned around at the nickname, “That’s not her name.” She knew rationally she shouldn’t have been angry at him. It  _ was  _ what Nat wanted, and she fought for that. She saved everyone, and despite the pain and heartbreak, Maria was endlessly proud of her for everything she had done. But she wasn’t close enough to Clint to think of him as anything but a physical manifestation of the reason why the love of her life was dead. Rationality be damned.

“Listen, Hill,” Clint chased after her, ignoring Tony’s insistence on letting it go. He followed her, pathetically explaining himself. “Tash--”

Maria whirled around, anger suddenly replacing stoicism and boiling over the surface, red hot. She punched him as hard as she could, right in the nose, grossly satisfied with the crack and the rush of blood, “Her name isn’t  _ fucking  _ Tash.”

Clint didn’t show his face for a while after that.”)

  
  


She doesn’t move on. Why should she? Everyone in the fucking universe gets their happy ending, gets their reunion, and she’s stuck in the past, mourning the hero that saved them all, the hero know one else even bothers to remember, the hero that just happened to be the love of her life. She gets nothing.

  
  


Maria visits Tony, Pepper, and Morgan, growing closer to them than she ever did before. It felt like they were the only ones that felt Natasha’s loss nearly as much as she did, and being around them felt like they were honoring the pieces of her that were left, cherishing and not forgetting.

She found herself talking to Morgan a lot, seeing bits of Natasha in her feisty personality, the way she held herself, the way she challenged those around her and asked questions when there were questions to be asked. Tony and Pepper are even better parents than she thought they’d be, and it was funny, to see the mix of them as well as Natasha in Morgan’s wit and intellect. 

They liked having her around. Tony was gentle with her, and the one time he found her asleep over the comforter in Nat’s room, clutching the photo from the nightstand, he put a blanket over her and never spoke of it again. Pepper always made an extra plate for Maria, so used to setting the table for four, and Morgan loved talking to Maria, bringing up her Auntie anytime she could. 

Maria had just left after a weekend visit when it started to rain, a storm moving in frighteningly quickly, dark clouds rolling in and disturbing the tranquil lake with fat rain droplets pelting down. 

Tony stood by his living room window, looking out at the storm while Pepper and Morgan were joking around in the living room. His phone rang, Steve on the other end. 

“I can’t find my hammer.” Steve sounded more than a little worried.

“Did you check under your pillow?”

Steve huffed, “I’m serious. I was sitting there and it just flew up into space. I put my hand out but it won’t come back.”

“Thor’s probably doing something crazy, how should I know?” They made some more small talk, but eventually Tony hung up, preoccupied by the cluster of storm clouds over his backyard. Thunder rumbles, loud enough where it shakes the lamp beside him, and Tony peers back up into the sky.

“FRIDAY, is there any hurricane warnings or something like that? This storm is picking up quick.” Tony gets closer to the window, watching the clouds darken.

FRIDAY’s operating system beeps, “There are no storm warnings in the area, boss. However, there does seem to be unusual activity in the atmosphere.” Tony turns around and shoots Pepper a look, and she gathers her and Morgan and takes them into a separate room. Tony doesn’t put on his suit, but he remains cautious, looking outside as the sky gets darker and the thunder grows louder.

Just as he’s about to suit up, the clouds light up in a shimmering flash of light, and lightning touches the middle of his backyard, basking the room in a white glow. 

When the light subsides, he sees a dark figure crumpled on the ground in the center of the lightning, scorched ground surrounding it and seemingly small against the expanse of the yard and lake. The rain is hammering down too hard to see anything from inside the living room, so he cautiously steps outside. The door doesn’t disturb the figure, and Tony advances further, wading through the rain and mud, past the singed grass, on his guard and cautious of the seemingly small frame that just fell out of the sky, crumpled and wet with rain, splatters of mud all over their body, and Tony steps closer, closer--

And then he sees the red hair. 

He  _ runs _ , runs towards her, falling to his knees and turning the body over and looking into the face of Natasha Romanoff, in his backyard, a month after pronounced dead. He looks at her in a bewildered shock, tears brimming in his eyes, and sees Mjolnir in her hand, sparking a faint blue. 

“Nat? Nat!” He rubs her shoulders, bringing her into a sitting position, feeling how cold and frozen her limbs were. For a second, his veins turn to ice when he wonders whether or not she’s--

But her eyes snap open, those green eyes, and he laughs out of relief. He crushes her, hugging her so tight, his best friend, the godmother to his daughter, his sister, his family, and he hugs her. She looks at him with shock and confusion and familiarity, her body aching and her mind scrambled. 

“How are you even here?” She watches as he grips her, eyes searching as if she weren’t really there.   


“I don’t...know,” Her mind feels like it’s filled with cotton, except there’s a painful thrum behind her eyelids, and she doesn’t know if she’s ever been this sore. “I felt like it just happened.”

The sadness is evident in Tony’s eyes, and she can almost see the reflection of her own fear through his tears. She almost starts to panic, the memory of falling, falling for so long, for longer than she expected to, falling and then the force of the hit and the pain, but now she’s  _ here _ , and Tony’s kissing the side of her head, helping her up, and she just doesn’t understand.

“ _ Auntie Nat!”  _ Morgan’s scream can be heard even over the hammering of the rain, and Pepper doesn’t even try to stop her, the two of them running towards her. Morgan wraps her arms tightly around Nat, and it does hurt a little bit. Nat can’t even imagine the bruising on her body right now, but she hugs Morgan back as tight as she can while Pepper and Tony are crushing her from either side. 

There’s a lot of confusion and hugging, and eventually they stumble inside and out of the rain, Pepper immediately trying to rush her into the laundry room to get into clean clothes.

Natasha feels overwhelmed, her limbs sluggish as Pepper helps dry her off and helps her step into something more comfortable. She doesn’t feel as if she’s here, and Pepper has told her she’s been dead for a month.

The questions are high in number when Nat looks at Tony, her voice still not functioning properly. She looks at him, blank, and then her eyes melt, fear and sadness seeping into every feature, and something else as well. “Did we do it, Tony?” Her jaw sets, but her chin shakes, and she needs to know. She needs to know. “Did we save them?”

Tony nods, smiling that trademark smile and wrapping Nat into another hug, this time pressing a phone into her hand. “We did.”

Nat stares down at the phone, her world crashing down around her but also focusing into one moment, one terrifying, life-changing moment that pressed into her throat with tears and panic and hope and the fear that this was all a dream, that she’d wake up any second. 

Her fingers were slow, too slow, but she couldn’t get them to move faster, dialing the number as fast as she could, not fast enough. She pressed the call button, her heart hammering in her chest, her pulse wild and erratic. She knows this is probably real, but she isn’t expecting her to pick up. She’s dialed this number so many times and has only reached voicemail after voicemail. 

( _ Maria Hill, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. _ )

She isn’t expecting her to pick up. She can’t pick up. This isn’t real.

“Hello?”

Maria’s voice, right there, through the phone. Nat grips the receiver in her hands, shaking, overcome with emotion. All she can do is stare at Tony in front of her, smiling, the echo of Maria’s voice,  _ hello _ , in her ears. 

“Tony? Hello?” Maria repeats into the receiver, and Nat just  _ smiles _ .

Nat feels the warmth shake back into her limbs, starts to wake up, starts to feel alive again when she responds, “Hey there.”

It’s almost funny, the sound of dozens of cars honking and the very obvious noise of tires squealing as Maria does a U-Turn across what must have been an entire intersection. She is crying Natasha’s name, and Natasha is  _ answering _ , and Maria is  _ answering _ , and they’re having a conversation, a new conversation, and Nat hasn’t felt so alive in years, hasn’t felt this giddy and happy and like she was brimming with smiles and excitement for as long as she can remember.

They remain on the phone, not really talking but rather making sure the other is still there, neither of them coherent enough to say what they really mean, to do anything but repeat each other’s names, though Nat does tell Maria to drive safely and not speed too much. Maria laughs at this, laughs through tears she can’t pretend to tamp down anymore.

“I’m almost there,” Maria promises, both to herself and to Natasha. Nat leaps off of the couch and runs out onto the porch, her trembling hands keeping the phone tucked up against her ear. Her earlier lethargy and pain has all but disappeared, and is now replaced with this high that she has never felt before. She feels  _ good _ , she feels strong, she feels  _ alive _ . Everyone was safe. Everyone was alive. Everyone was alive and she was about to see Maria Hill for the first time in  _ five years _ .

Maria doesn’t even hang up when she pulls into the driveway. She throws her phone into the passenger seat, puts her car in park when she’s not even halfway through the driveway, as soon as she sees Natasha’s face. 

And there Maria is.

There Maria is, jumping out of the car. There Maria is, running towards her. There Maria  _ is _ , in her arms,  _ real _ ,  _ alive _ , clutching at her, skin pressed against skin, breathing and heart beating and  _ there _ , and they cannot get close enough, clawing at each other’s backs, rocking against each other, Maria burying her head in Nat’s neck and finally feeling that gorgeous long hair between her fingers. And there’s magic in Maria’s fingertips, pressing into Nat, breathing life back into her.

Maria let herself cry once or twice over the past month. But being in Nat’s arms, having Nat back, finally having their reunion, the reunion the two of them both deserve after learning what it feels like to live without the other, to think the other was gone forever--she lets herself break down. She lets herself cry in Nat’s arms, lets herself be held, lets Nat ground her. She loves her so much, so much. She loved her, missed her so much she couldn’t breathe. 

Nat holds Maria, presses kisses to Maria’s cheek and head as Maria tucks her nose into Natasha’s hair. “I’m back. I’m safe. We’re both here, we’re both safe.”

Maria turns her head and kisses Nat’s neck, safe and soft, feeling her pulse so close, a reminder of just how alive Nat really was in front of her. “I love you. I never got the chance to say it back. I love you.”

And when Nat finally straightens, finally smiles at her so wide and so happy, when she finally leans up and kisses Maria so softly, it’s all Maria can do not to get down on one knee right then.

“I love you too.”


End file.
